Book talk: Mr. and Mrs. Turner are writers, so naturally they named their baby girl Paige. Paige Turner. But their daughter prefers to communicate through drawing. It just goes to show that since birth, her parents have never understood her. The only person who really knows Paige is her best friend, but now that her parents have moved the family to New York she feels like no one really knows her and she is completely alone. So she decides to turns her artist grandmother's advice into rules to live by to create a new Paige. Rule # 1? No more excuses! Buy a sketchbook and draw a few pages each week.
Rocks my socks: Even though I have never considered myself artistic in terms of drawing, Paige really resonated with me. I can sympathize with the way Paige lives in her head, and I can draw inspiration from the way she sets and meets goals involving putting herself out there more. I loved the game of drawing telephone they played (one person writes a phrase, next draws the phrase out and folds back paper to hide original phrase, next writes a phrase to match the picture, and so on.) The visual puns delighted me (Paige's head as pages in a book when a boy can read her like one, a picture of her wringing her head like a towel and ideas dripping out, etc.) In particular I found the guerilla artwork of Paige and her friends charming (quotes written in chalk on public stairs, faces and poems drawn on tulips, plastic eggs filled with objects and writing hidden around campus a month after Easter, etc.)
Rocks in my socks: The ending is a bit too neat and perfect for my tastes. It's inspiring that her efforts all turned out so well, but it seems a bit too pat and unrealistic.
Every book its reader: I'd give it to 6th graders and up looking for a coming of age story or a heartfelt, realistic graphic novel.
Page by Paige by Laura Lee Gulledge
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